"It's time to take the radical step of privileging correct information over incorrect information." (Rachel Maddow, 2/6/2009)
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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Wingnuts: You Can't Make This Up Edition

Domestic terrorists to hold auction Oct. 26: Friends of Scott Roeder, the man who allegedly murdered women's health doctor George Tiller, is planning to auction off anti-abortion materials to raise money for his defense. Rachel Maddow is joined by Lee Thompson, the lawyer for George Tiller's estate.

After six days, the Republican National Committee finally removed a picture from its Facebook page that called the mixing of races a "crime against American values." In 2004, the RNC demanded an apology from MoveOn.org after a supporter posted a video comparing President Bush to Hitler. Will the RNC live up to its own standards and apologize?

RNC Facebook Page Hosted Blatantly Racist Photo

Earlier today, the Republican National Committee finally removed a racist photo of President Obama that had been featured on its Facebook page since October 20th. The photo in question decried "miscegenation" as "a crime against American values." (It was available HERE).
Miscegenation is defined as "a mixture of races."

This disgraceful photo was just one of dozens.

The RNC's Standards

The RNC will no doubt claim it wasn't aware the racist photo was on their page and it wasn't produced or posted by anyone at the RNC. Both claims are most likely true. However, the RNC must live up to its own standards.
In 2004, when a web user posted a self-produced web video that compared President Bush to Hitler as part of a MoveOn.org video contest, the RNC acted as if the video had been produced by MoveOn itself.
Additionally, the RNC demanded that MoveOn.org apologize - which it did. According to the National Journal:

By the end of 2003, MoveOn had launched an open competition ("Bush in 30 Seconds") for anti-Bush ads, promising to air the most-effective ones. With more than 1,500 submissions, the screening was lax: Among the odious ads making their way onto www.MoveOn.org were at least two comparing Bush directly to Adolf Hitler, one of them proffering fake Hitler (and fake Bush) quotes.
Such invective is a staple of the darker corners of the Internet, but it brought unwelcome attention. After the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith denounced the ads as "vile and outrageous," Republicans sought to marginalize MoveOn."This is the worst and most vile form of political hate speech," Republican National Committee spokesman Ed Gillespie proclaimed. "MoveOn.org should apologize."
Boyd did just that, expressing "deep regret" that the ads made it through MoveOn's filtering process, and promising to scrutinize such material in the future. Pariser emphasized that MoveOn had not produced the ads, not aired them, not endorsed them in the voting, and had removed them from the Web site --adding that the RNC had put them on its Web site to score points. Still, the damage had been done.

MoveOn.org removed the offensive material from their website and expressed "deep regret" over the situation. The RNC should be forced to do the same.

FoxNews.com, the official website of the Fox News anti-Obamapropagandanetwork, is promoting what it calls the “Obama Change Index.” The index purports to chart “the impact of policies promised by President Obama,” and conveniently graphs Obama’s progress on a scale of 0-700. It appears that Fox’s “change index” is tabulated by asking one Democratic, Republican, and Independent pundit what they think of Obama on 7 different issues: budget, stimulus, homeland security, foreign/military affairs, social issues, dealing with Congress, law and justice. While Obama’s favorable ratings have been going up recently, Fox News’ index unsurprisingly shows Obama tanking. Reddit user KingBeetle writes of the index, “I can’t even figure out what it means, but for some reason this week, Obama is down 271 points.” It’s now 282 points:

A couple of interesting observations from the “Obama Change Index”: On the week of 9/16/09, Obama scored a zero on Homeland Security for no apparent reason. Similarly, Obama scored a zero on “social issues” the week of 6/30/09 because he “tried to placate the gay community.”

Just when you think political ads can't get any worse, along comes this four-minute travesty starring a rat (a stand-in for the villainous Democratic former governor, Roy Barnes) and an ox (representing the ad's strong though perhaps somewhat dumb creator, John Oxendine). Via The Awl, which believes the ad "is not just stupid, it is powerful stupid." A commenter over there adds: "This is the most Aesopian campaign ad ever!"

Or the point at which politics becomes South Park. Go to the 2:15 mark and the head-butting montage. It's mesmerizingly kick-ass.

Tempest in a tea party Oct. 26: Ms. Information: Rachel Maddow reports on some stories that didn't make the front page, including the conflict between the Tea Party Patriots and the Fox News-promoted Tea Party Express bus tour.